Like a Motion Picture

WHAT CAN ONE SAY about a woman who once dated Marlon Brando? In the 1960s Aruna Vasudev was em­ployed in the films section of the United Nations in New York when the famous actor walked into her office. He was smitten with her, like many others before and after him. Aruna was hugely talented, but she was also very beautiful till the day she died earlier this month. Brando asked her if she would have dinner with him that evening.

Aruna agreed but on one con­dition, he would have to come and pick her up at home after work. The actor had no problem with that. I asked her several times what happened after din­ner. She always insisted that nothing happened, it was just dinner. But I have my suspicions!

The obituaries got it right. Aruna was our foremost film historian and critic. She knew Asian cinema like the back of her hand and was largely responsible for putting it on the world map at the time when the West was only familiar with films from Japan, those of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. She drew attention to films from Iran, Korea, the Philippines, that there was more to Indian cinema than just Satyajit Ray.

She founded the quarterly magazine, Cinemaya that high­lighted Asian films and set up Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC). She ran the magazine with a skeleton staff from a room in her flat in New Delhi’s Defence Colony. Later, an entrepreneur made an offer for the magazine that Aruna could not refuse but after a few years he ran it to the ground.

I wish to deviate from all that and write about Aruna, my closest and best friend. We met 40 years ago when I arrived in Delhi to head a UN office. A friend in New York had told me to look her up but it was through Muzaffar Ali that I first met her. It was in the coffee lounge of India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi. We were discussing how one could breathe life into Ali’s Zooni whose production had stalled due to troubles in Kashmir.

Aruna and I hit it off right away. IIC was her haunt. Any evening she was not at home she was likely to be found at the bar there surrounded by friends and admirers. We met at least once a week if we were in town.

We saw movies together. My taste was more eclectic, she was more discerning. I liked Mira Nair’s The Namesake, she didn’t care for it. Our last outing to a cinema hall was to the multiplex in Chanaky­apuri to see Nandita Das’ Manto. She loved it. No surprise there. Aruna had nurtured Nandita from the time she was a child.

By then Aruna’s health had begun deteriorating. But she continued to hold soirees at her elegant, book-filled home. You were likely to come across well-known as well as lesser-known filmmakers, authors, journalists, painters and even bureaucrats. She was generous with drinks and there was always a good spread on the table. Aruna loved to dance, she would get up and swing if music was playing.

When her daughter Yamini who is better known as Inca was getting married in 2011, the sangeet was to be held at my place but the bridegroom’s grandmother died a few days earlier and it had to be cancelled. Instead, we had the mehndi ceremony on my lawns and the wedding itself was a quiet family affair in Benares. Varun and Inca have a lovely, chirpy daughter, Anshuya, now eleven years, adored by both grandmothers, Menaka Gandhi and Aruna.

We quarrelled, we sulked but mostly Aruna and I had laughs together. Aruna and I were together so often that friends joked that we should get married. It was just that, a joke. We would have killed each other.

She was 88 when she passed, only ten days younger than me. Every year Aruna and I celebrated our birthdays together and included Sir Mark Tully in the festivities since his birthday was around the same time.

In her final months, Aruna had Alzheimer’s. She couldn’t remember names and faces and it embarrassed her. To make matters worse she lost sight of one eye and had difficulty reading. She was ready to go.

Aruna Vasudevcinemacinema hostoriancriticMark TullyNETPAC